I'll make this short- got this email from the NY Times:
Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Saturday, September 17, 2011 -- 6:00 PM EDT
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President Obama to Seek Higher Tax Rate on Millionaires
President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, administration officials said.
With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal, the proposal adds a populist feature to Mr. Obama s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats support of future savings from Medicare and Medicaid.
Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the Buffett Rule, in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I'll update it in a bit with more info. In the meantime, wow! Did someone find the Barack Obama that campaigned three years ago?!!
A little more info from the article.
While this sounds like a great idea and it is in many ways, there are a couple of buts to it.
First, it seems that GOP support for this is expected in exchange for Democratic support for changes to Medicare and Medicaid. For me, and most here, if that means a raise to the eligibility age for Medicare- no matter how many years it is stretched out over- that is a non-starter.
Personally, the tax rates for the uber-weathy need to just go up, end of story. Do that, and invest in infrastructure and a few other things and the deficit goes away all by itself.